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An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians

An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians

A New Edition, with an Introductory Study, Notes, and Appendices by José Juan Arrom

  • Author: Pané, Fray Ramon; Arrom, José Juan; Griswold, Susan C.
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • Serie: Chronicles of the New World Encounter
  • ISBN: 9780822323259
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822382546
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 1999
  • Month: November
  • Pages: 104
  • DDC: 972.93
  • Language: English
Accompanying Columbus on his second voyage to the New World in 1494 was a young Spanish friar named Ramón Pané. The friar’s assignment was to live among the “Indians” whom Columbus had “discovered” on the island of Hispaniola (today the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), to learn their language, and to write a record of their lives and beliefs. While the culture of these indigenous people—who came to be known as the Taíno—is now extinct, the written record completed by Pané around 1498 has survived. This volume makes Pané’s landmark Account—the first book written in a European language on American soil—available in an annotated English edition.

Edited by the noted Hispanist José Juan Arrom, Pané’s report is the only surviving direct source of information about the myths, ceremonies, and lives of the New World inhabitants whom Columbus first encountered. The friar’s text contains many linguistic and cultural observations, including descriptions of the Taíno people’s healing rituals and their beliefs about their souls after death. Pané provides the first known description of the use of the hallucinogen cohoba, and he recounts the use of idols in ritual ceremonies. The names, functions, and attributes of native gods; the mythological origin of the aboriginal people’s attitudes toward sex and gender; and their rich stories of creation are described as well.

  • CONTENTS
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction to the English Edition
  • Introductory Study
  • AN ACCOUNT OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF THE INDIANS
    • An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, Diligently Gathered by Fray Ramón, a Man Who Knows Their Language, by Order of
      • I Concerning the place from which the Indians have come and in what manner
      • II How the men were separated from the women
      • III How the indignant Guahayona resolved to leave, seeing that those men whom he had sent to gather the digo for bathing did
      • IV Guahayona departed with all the women and went in search of other lands, and he arrived in Matinino, where he immediately left the women and went to another region, called Guanin, and they had left the small children next to a stream
      • V How afterwards there were once again women on the said Island of Hispaniola, which before was called Haiti, and the inhabit
      • VI How Guahayona returned to the said Cauta, from where he had taken the women
      • VII How there were once again women on the aforementioned Island of Haití, which is now called Hispaniola
      • VIII How they found a solution so that they would be women
      • IX How they say the sea was made
      • X How the four identical sons of Itiba Cahubaba, who died in childbirth, went together to take Yaya's gourd, which held his
      • XI Concerning what happened to the four brothers when they were fleeing from Yaya
      • XII Concerning what they believe about the dead wandering about, and what they are like, and what they do
      • XIII Concerning the shape they say the dead have
      • XIV Concerning whence they deduce this and who leads them to hold such a belief
      • XV Concerning the observances of these Indian behigues, and how they practice medicine and teach the people, and in their med
      • XVI Concerning what the said behiques do
      • XVII How the aforesaid physicians have at times been deceived
      • XVIII How the relatives of the dead man take revenge when they have got an answer by means of the spell of the drinks
        • [XVIII BIS] How they find out what they want from the one whom they have burned, and how they take revenge
      • XIX How they make and keep the zemis made of wood or of stone
      • XX Concerning the zemi Buya and Aiba, who they say was burned when there was war, and afterwards, when they washed him with y
      • XXI Concerning Guamarete's zemi
      • XXII Concerning another zemi called Opiyelguobirán, which was in the possession of a preeminent man called Sabananiobabo, who
      • XXIII Concerning another zemi whose name was Guabancex
      • XXIV Concerning what they believe about another zemi whose name was Baraguabael
      • XXV Concerning the things they affirm were told by two principal caciques of the Island of Hispaniola, one called Cacibaquel,
        • [XXV BIS] How we left to go to the country of the aforesaid Mabiatué–that is, I, Fray Ramón Pané, a humble friar, Fray Juan d
      • XXVI Concerning what happened to the images and the miracle God worked to show his power
  • Appendix A. Christopher Columbus
  • Appendix B. Pietro Martire d'Anghiera
  • Appendix C. Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas
  • Bibliographic Note
  • Index of Taíno Words and Names

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